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Moving stadium dents team performance

By Ian Sample

If your favourite team is moving to a plush new sports stadium, prepare for disappointment. Making the switch can have a dramatic effect on a team’s performance, a new study has found.

“It’ll probably cost you a couple of points in a season, and in some sports, that’s the difference between winning and second place,” says Richard Pollard, a statistician at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California.

Pollard studied results of professional baseball, basketball and ice hockey games in the US between 1987 and 2000. He found that teams that moved stadiums lost on average 24 per cent of their home advantage – the tendency for teams to get better results when playing at their home ground. Other sports, like American football, are likely to be similarly affected, he says.

Pollard says the effect is most probably due to the lack of familiarity players have with the new ground. Adapting to a new surface, pitch size and location can all act to distract players.

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But familiarity might not be the only reason. Players in a new ground are less likely to have the territorial passion of a team that has played at the same ground for years. The testosterone in professional soccer players surged by up to 67 per cent more during home games compared to away fixtures, found Sandy Wolfson, at the University of Northumbria, UK, in 2002.

The good news for teams on the move is that Pollard is confident that the negative effects will only be temporary, although he has yet to work out how long it lasts. He also expects that teams could minimise the effect. “You want to be playing a lot of friendlies in your new stadium before the real season begins,” he says.